Coppola comeback at Rome film festival
Enlarge imageBy Silvia Aloisi
ROME (Reuters) - Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie in 10 years is likely to be the top attraction at the Rome film festival next month.
Like its main Italian rival the Venice festival, which ended earlier this month, the lineup in Rome this year is laden with U.S. productions exploring the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 attacks and a tarnished image of America.
That is the case with Robert Redford’s "Lions for Lambs", in which he stars alongside Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. The film tells the story of two soldiers wounded behind enemy lines in Afghanistan and the repercussions back home.
Also screening will be Gavin Hood’s "Rendition", which premiered at the Toronto festival. It stars Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal and is about an American trying to track down her Egyptian-born husband, who is held at a secret CIA detention centre.
The films are the latest in a string of Hollywood productions tackling the broad military fallout from the September 11 attacks, a theme that has made U.S. cinema popular at European festivals even if box office returns have been mixed.
"This is a great moment for American cinema and for Hollywood," said Piera Detassis, a Rome festival curator.
Among other U.S. titles screening in Rome is "Noise", casting Tim Robbins as .....continued below
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a New Yorker who turns into a vigilante exasperated by car alarms going off in the middle of the night.Sean Penn will also present his "Into the Wild", the true story of a 24-year-old on a road trip across America and into the Alaskan wilderness that ultimately cost him his life.
Coppola returns to the big screen on a lighter note with "Youth Without Youth", the romantic tale of an elderly Romanian professor who becomes young again after being hit by lightning.
WORLD PREMIERE
The veteran filmmaker, known for cult movies like "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather" trilogy, is back in the director’s seat 10 years after shooting "The Rainmaker", and has picked Rome -- which suffers from its proximity to the Toronto festival -- for his world premiere.
Like most of the top titles, his film will screen outside the main competition, largely dedicated to lesser known and emerging directors. Fourteen films, mostly from Europe but also from Argentina, Canada, Russia, Japan, the U.S. and China, are vying for the best movie award. The festival runs October 18-27.
The festival, the brainchild of Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, was launched last year after an acrimonious war of words with Venice, which feared the competition from Italy’s capital.
Organizers were disappointed that their showcase was not on a list of the world’s top 50 film festivals drawn up by movie magazine Variety, but Veltroni said his pet project had already proved a success.
"We have only had one edition. We have to wait for it to consolidate but last year the results of the first film festival were extraordinary," he told Reuters in an interview this week.
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By Silvia Aloisi
ROME (Reuters) - Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie in 10 years is likely to be the top attraction at the Rome film festival next month.
Like its main Italian rival the Venice festival, which ended earlier this month, the lineup in Rome this year is laden with U.S. productions exploring the U.S. response to the September 11, 2001 attacks and a tarnished image of America.
That is the case with Robert Redford’s "Lions for Lambs", in which he stars alongside Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. The film tells the story of two soldiers wounded behind enemy lines in Afghanistan and the repercussions back home.
Also screening will be Gavin Hood’s "Rendition", which premiered at the Toronto festival. It stars Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal and is about an American trying to track down her Egyptian-born husband, who is held at a secret CIA detention centre.
The films are the latest in a string of Hollywood productions tackling the broad military fallout from the September 11 attacks, a theme that has made U.S. cinema popular at European festivals even if box office returns have been mixed.
"This is a great moment for American cinema and for Hollywood," said Piera Detassis, a Rome festival curator.
Among other U.S. titles screening in Rome is "Noise", casting Tim Robbins as a New Yorker who turns into a vigilante exasperated by car alarms going off in the middle of the night.
Sean Penn will also present his "Into the Wild", the true story of a 24-year-old on a road trip across America and into the Alaskan wilderness that ultimately cost him his life.
Coppola returns to the big screen on a lighter note with "Youth Without Youth", the romantic tale of an elderly Romanian professor who becomes young again after being hit by lightning.
WORLD PREMIERE
The veteran filmmaker, known for cult movies like "Apocalypse Now" and "The Godfather" trilogy, is back in the director’s seat 10 years after shooting "The Rainmaker", and has picked Rome -- which suffers from its proximity to the Toronto festival -- for his world premiere.
Like most of the top titles, his film will screen outside the main competition, largely dedicated to lesser known and emerging directors. Fourteen films, mostly from Europe but also from Argentina, Canada, Russia, Japan, the U.S. and China, are vying for the best movie award. The festival runs October 18-27.
The festival, the brainchild of Rome mayor Walter Veltroni, was launched last year after an acrimonious war of words with Venice, which feared the competition from Italy’s capital.
Organizers were disappointed that their showcase was not on a list of the world’s top 50 film festivals drawn up by movie magazine Variety, but Veltroni said his pet project had already proved a success.
"We have only had one edition. We have to wait for it to consolidate but last year the results of the first film festival were extraordinary," he told Reuters in an interview this week.
"At first there were all these fears of rivalry between Rome and Venice, but it was shown that Rome worked fine and so did Venice. This is the Italian syndrome: whenever anything new comes along, everyone reaches for their gun to shoot it down."
(Additional reporting by Robin Pomeroy)
© 2008 Reuters Click for restrictions
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